Caged
by Iggy - Essence of Angst
Summary: Ayane had never thought Kasumi was anything but a worthless coward. Deathfic. Oneshot.


**Disclaimer: **I own nothing, just the games.

_Thank you to Fox of Anubis for taking the time to read this and correct any errors._

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"Ayane…" Kasumi choked out, her sister's cold fingers tightening on her neck. "Why… why did it…"

Ayane's gaze hardened as she watched Kasumi's eyes start to drift shut. The older girl had put up a fight - a tremendous fight to the death as usual - but this time, it was not enough. Kasumi had let her emotional state distract her usual tactics whenever she became cornered, and now she was paying for it. She lay on the ground, one of her wrists slightly sprained from struggling, and the other being held down by her sister's own hand. Her body was beaten and bruised all over, and trails of dried blood covered her arms and legs from the intensity of the battle. Ayane was bent down above her, one knee digging sharply into her ribcage. It was the main thing that kept Kasumi from trying to muster the strength to get back up just one more time.

But before she died, she wanted to know one last thing.

"Please…" Kasumi begged, her voice raspy with pain, quivering fingers clutching onto the death grip. "I… just…"

Ayane's grip did not loosen; instead she maintained the deadly hold on her sister. "Just shut up and die, damn it!"

_I'm going to kill her. It doesn't matter what she's going to say. I've long since given up my childhood for a future that doesn't seem to end without pain. _

"Ayane." The word was barely audible, and yet the purple kunoichi heard it clearly. For the briefest of seconds, something flickered in the scarlet gaze of her sister, and Ayane relented - but just enough so that Kasumi could speak. "Why did you… do you really hate me… that much?"

Ayane met her gaze with her fiercest glare, and her grip tightened again, easily cutting off any further pleas her half-sister might have had. "It's always about you, Kasumi!" Although Kasumi's gaze was slightly distorted, she was still surprised at Ayane's sudden outburst, and it showed. Ayane had never voiced her half-sister's name since before the incident in which her sister had abandoned them all.

"It was always about you," Ayane repeated, her voice less harsh now. "You were special, you were _perfect_, you were everyone's damned princess. And what was I?" Her voice rose, and she momentarily took her hand and sent a vicious slap across the face of her half-sibling. A red mark began to form, and Kasumi's distant gaze was filled with tears. "Nothing! I was worthless to everyone! I became the mistreated child! I was a fucking bastard to them!" Rage began to obstruct her vision. "Do you hear me, Kasumi? I was nothing!"

"You were _not_ nothing," Kasumi struggled to explain, trying to hide how stunned she was at her sister's sudden anger. Yes, she was aware of Ayane's hatred for her, but she had never witnessed it like this. She almost seemed… _desperate_. "You were my friend! You were my half-sister!"

"No…" Ayane retorted, her voice shaking. "If I meant so much to you… you wouldn't have abandoned me… or Hayate! You wouldn't have ran away to become this weak, self-assured coward!"

"You know why I ran away!" Kasumi responded, but before she had a chance to say anything further, Ayane's fist shot at her, and a blinding pain erupted in her throat.

"Shut up! Stop using such pathetic excuses!"

At this point, Ayane's rage extended past the point of control, and she lashed out at Kasumi. Minutes later, the body underneath hers went limp with defeat, and the gaze that stared lifelessly back up at her was blank.

-

Ayane got back up, her hands covered in her half-sister's blood. Tears blinded her vision and she stumbled away from the body of her older sibling, trying to reclaim a grasp on her surroundings.

"You bitch," Ayane hissed, holding back the sting of tears and kneeling down to the ground for balance. "You can't take anything away from me anymore. You can't do anything to me anymore. I killed you, damn it. There's nothing you can do."

_Do you really hate me that much?_

That was the final question Kasumi had been able to ask, and it echoed in the kunoichi's mind.

"You ruined everything," Ayane continued, her breathing coming out in shortened gasps. The tears she was unable to hold back any longer spilled down her cheeks, although she was barely aware of the fact that she was crying. "You ruined me… what I could have been."

Silence greeted her accusation.

"Everything was because of you. _Everything_. You were never really my sister… if you cared so much, you wouldn't have run away. You wouldn't have abandoned us… abandoned me."

More silence. She suddenly remembered her hands were still covered in the blood of the enemy.

The sudden realization that the sticky crimson also happened to be the blood of someone in her clan slammed into her.

_Her_ blood. She tried to wipe the blood off on the ground, scraping her palms against it to rub off the stickiness.

Kasumi was a traitor, yes. In Ayane's perspective, the bitch deserved to die. Kasumi had been a coward. Ayane didn't care what her reasons had been; the older kunoichi had gone against the Code, and departed for her own selfish intentions instead of doing her duty as expected.

"You're dead," Ayane repeated, although the malice in her voice had long faded away to be replaced with a sort of mournful tone. Her hand rose to cover her face. "It doesn't matter. The news will… make everyone happy… and I can finally prove to them that I was just as capable as you. You were _never_ better… you were always the _precious_ one…"

_Always you, never me. _

_Never.

* * *

_

Later that day when the sun was setting, a figure could be seen still kneeling on the ground. Faded trails of blood still covered her outfit in various spots. The space in front of her was empty; the only evidence that there had ever been a fight was the dried blood on the dirt.

There were dried tearstains on the cheeks of the figure, and her gaze remained focused on the spot in front of her, as if she were unaware that things had changed. She reached out a hand as if to grasp something, but then stopped and drew her hand back, her expression slightly disturbed.

The whisper of two simple words could be distinctly heard.

"You're dead."

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Finished: June. 23rd, 2006

Edited: June. 24th, 2006


End file.
